Psalms 18:4

The sorrows of death compassed me -Surrounded me. That is, he was in imminent danger of death, or in the midst of such pangs and sorrows as are supposed commonly to attend on death. He refers probably to some period in his past life - perhaps in the persecutions of Saul - when he was so beset with troubles and difficulties that it seemed to him that he must die. The word rendered “sorrows” -חבלchebel- means, according to Gesenius, “a cord, a rope,” and hence, “a snare, gin, noose;” and the idea here is, according to Gesenius, that he was taken as it were in the snares of death, or in the bands of death. SoPsalms 116:3.